Palais de l'Élysée
The French president's residence stands behind its iron gate on Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré, a 365-room hôtel particulier that the public gets exactly one weekend a year to walk through. During the Journées européennes du patrimoine, the queues stretch early and the wait is worth it: you pass through the same Hall of Honour where heads of state arrive, and into salons that have barely changed since architect Joseph-Eugène Lacroix finished his renovations in 1867.
Out back, the two-hectare English garden holds plane trees that were already old before the Revolution. Near the Avenue Gabriel boundary, the Belle Époque Grille du Coq — a cast-iron gate topped with a rooster — marks the garden's edge with the kind of detail that rewards anyone who looks up.
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People who've done the Heritage Days visit say the same thing: go for the Salon Murat, where the cabinet meets every Wednesday, and linger in the Jardins d'Hiver — the 1883 greenhouse that now extends the Salle des Fêtes. If the line for the palace defeats you, the Maison Élysée across the street runs free guided tours Tuesday through Friday, no queue required.
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Book directly at the providerHow Palais de l'Élysée came to be
Armand-Claude Mollet built the mansion between 1718 and 1722 for Louis Henri de la Tour d'Auvergne, Count of Évreux, bankrolled largely by the two-million-livre dowry his wife Marie-Anne Crozat had brought to their 1707 marriage. It passed through notable hands — Madame de Pompadour lived here, as did the financier Nicolas Beaujon, for whom Étienne-Louis Boullée redecorated it in 1773. The Duchess of Bourbon gave it the name Élysée in 1787.
Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte moved in as the Republic's first president in 1848, and between 1853 and 1867 had architect Joseph-Eugène Lacroix reshape the interiors into the form they essentially hold today. The Third Republic made it the official presidential residence in 1873. On 14 June 1940, German forces raised their flag on the roof; the building served briefly as a prisoner camp before being vacated and guarded until French authorities reclaimed it in August 1944.
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Background & history adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA) · specs from Wikidata (CC0) · weather from Open-Meteo · map data © OpenStreetMap contributors · photos from Wikimedia Commons / Unsplash with per-image credit. No third-party reviews or social posts reproduced.